C L O V E R F I E L D

Monday, January 21st, 2008 @ 12:37PM

They have made monster movies cool again!

Before you read my thoughts on CLOVERFIELD, please note that my inner-child is a 12 year old boy who used to stay up past midnight to watch Godzilla movies.  In that regard, not much has changed.
I remember the excitement I had ten years ago when Godzilla was released ... remember the updated version set in New York?  And it sucked.  I was disappointed.  How can you go wrong when making a monster movie?  There’s not much required in the plot.  Yet they made one of the worst movies ever.

Thankfully, the makers of CLOVERFIELD delivered a gem.  They found an excellent way to tell a monster-attacking-New York tale.  The filming is very much like The Blair Witch Project, but this film actually shows you the monster (but not too much) and had a decent budget for special effects.  I loved it.  There are still many unanswered questions about the monster’s origin and how the film ends.  No clear conclusion is really provided.  But allow me to speculate ... at least on the monster’s origin.  I suspect that it was a military experiment gone awry.  The film does not openly divulge any of this, but there are what I consider to be clues.  First of all, the title of the film.  Nobody knows what it means.  But it sounds like goverment nicknames for top secret experiments and weapons development.  In World War II, the name given to the creation of the nuclear bomb was The Manhattan Project.  Is there any ironic twist to this...since Manhattan is pretty much destroyed in the movie?  And the presence of military in the area in response to the monster attack seemed rapid, and they quarantined certain people (you’ll see why in the movie.) It seemed like the military arrived with some basic understanding of what they were battling.  Again, none of this is spoon-fed to the audience but this is my theory at least.  Given JJ Abrams’ involvement as the film’s producer (he is also involved with the TV series LOST) you can see why I speculate that there are many unanswered questions about the movie.

Go see it! 

todd’s iPod
10:20 “Only A Lad” Oingo Boingo
1:20 “Funplex” The B-52s

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